


Strangers in the Night

by OrangeTabby



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (smorror??), Alternate Universe - Hospital, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Character Death, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Horror, Medical Procedures, Modern Westeros, Smutty horror, discussions of euthanasia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:06:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27310153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrangeTabby/pseuds/OrangeTabby
Summary: An unknown aircraft lands in the night.A young woman in agony on board.What will Doctor Sansa Stark do when faced with a patient suffering from the most bizarre symptoms she’s ever seen?A Modern Westerosi horror story: a retelling of the tale of Aerea Targaryen.
Relationships: Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark
Comments: 20
Kudos: 77





	Strangers in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Please READ THE TAGS. The level of horror is always in the eye of the beholder, but please make sure you are comfortable reading this content.  
> This one-shot is inspired by the canonical story of Aerea Targaryen (she is 13 in canon, but aged up to adulthood here). If you want an idea about the content of this story in advance, have a read of Aerea’s story in Fire and Blood or the summarised version on the ASoIaF wiki. My version is similar to canon, but more detailed. Canon events happen onscreen, rather than being recounted by a Septon after the fact.  
> I am not a medical professional and so some details may be inaccurate. 
> 
> Many thanks to [ Prairie_Garden_Girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prairie_Garden_Girl/pseuds/Prairie_Garden_Girl) for reading over this story for me, and also to RMG for the help with some medical bits and pieces.

Tower: This is Winterfell Air Traffic Control to unknown aircraft, please respond.

[no response]

Tower: Unknown aircraft, this is Winterfell Air Traffic control, I need you to respond.

[no response]

Tower: Winter Air Traffic Control to unknown aircraft, we’re registering you on a flight vector of three-zero-zero-nine-six into Winterfell, can you confirm?

[no response]

Tower: unknown aircraft, we have tracked your flight path as originating in the Valyrian Exclusion Zone. I advise that attempting a landing on Northern soil will constitute a violation of the Treaty of Valyrian Exclusion and you will be taken into custody on arrival.

[no response]

Tower: Winterfell Air Traffic Control to unknown aircraft, we need a response from you.

[no response]

Tower: Winterfell Air Traffic Control to unknown aircraft, we are registering some deviations in your projected flight path. Can you confirm your intentions?

[no response]

Tower: unknown aircraft, I remind you that under the Treaty of Valyrian Exclusion you will be required to submit to a full quarantine.

Unknown aircraft (a young woman’s soft voice): Please…

[fades to static]

Tower: Winterfell Air Traffic Control to unknown aircraft, please respond.

[no response]

Tower: unknown aircraft, we have cleared all runways and you are safe to land. I advise you will be met with a full emergency response and subsequent quarantine. Please respond.

[no response]

***

The song ‘Strangers in the Night’ was playing on the old radio in the staff room, which Sansa was secretly proud she recognised. Sandor must have been in there before her. He was a fan of Westerlands heavy metal bands and always tuned to the metal station. Sansa stifled a sigh and switched it to the classical station.

Her feet ached from being two-thirds of the way through her twelve-hour night shift in the Emergency Department at Winterfell Memorial Hospital. She flopped into a chair and groaned in pleasure at finally being able to sit. She took a sip of her strong coffee, then unwrapped the chicken and salad roll she’d made at home.

Arya often made fun of her for taking homemade lunches to work, as if she couldn’t afford to buy cafeteria food on a doctor’s salary. Sansa always shrugged. The food she prepared herself was nicer than what she could buy, and she wanted to enjoy any of the rare chances she got to sit and eat.

She had taken two blissful mouthfuls of food and downed half her coffee when one of the Emergency Department nurses, Sam Tarly, came rushing in. “Doctor Stark, um, Sansa,” he said between gasps of trying to catch his breath. “We’ve got an isolation case coming. Doctor Clegane is suiting up now and needs you.”

Sansa took one last mouthful of her roll, chased it with coffee, and jumped to her feet. “He could have paged me,” she muttered, following Sam out of the staffroom.

“He wanted me to explain on the way,” Sam said, heading towards the clean room where Sansa could don her personal protective gear.

Sansa tried not to feel resentful that Sandor didn’t contact her himself. After one unexpected and intense night of passion after the staff Sevenmas dinner last year, they’d hardly spoken. Naked and sweaty in his arms the following morning, she’d blurted that she’d wanted to focus on her career, not a relationship. He had taken that to mean she found him ugly with his scars and regretted sleeping with him. His hurt and anger had been palpable before he stormed out of her house. He’d been utterly wrong, of course, she had always considered him to be immensely attractive, but had worked too hard to become a doctor to lose her head over a man.

“The incoming patient is bleeding from her eyes,” Sam said as they hurried through the hallways. “Unresponsive with a high fever. They reported it measuring as ten degrees above normal, but that can’t be right. Her blood pressure is sixty over forty and falling. She’s tachycardic in response, with a heartbeat of one hundred and thirty beats a minute.

“Haemolacria?” Sansa murmured, referring to the eye bleeding. “Unusual. Hence the isolation. That’s a terrible BP too.”

“She was the sole person on a plane coming from Valyria. She landed the plane safely with the autopilot, but she was unconscious when the emergency people reached her.”

Sansa’s walk slowed briefly before speeding up again. “Valyria? Aircraft aren’t allowed there.”

Sam hummed in agreement. “More than that, I read that they fall out of the sky. No details on this plane, other than it’s a light aircraft, coloured black, with the name ‘Balerion’ printed on the side.”

They reached the clean room, Sansa’s mind whirring with possibilities.

“Sam,” she said. “Phone Stannis, he’ll want to see this. Whatever this is.”

Stannis Baratheon, Chief Physician of Winterfell Memorial, usually took the day shift, but was known to work far longer hours than that. He had a particular passion for difficult to diagnose cases. He was prickly, and a perfectionist, but Sansa always learned a lot from him. Stannis generally worked so hard that his husband Davos often had to come and pick him up and make him go home to eat and rest.

Sam paled. “He’ll shout at me. It’s three a.m.”

“He’ll stop shouting when you mention Valyria,” Sansa said over her shoulder as she walked through the door. “No one goes to Valyria.”

As far as Sansa knew Valyria was a heavily restricted no-man's-land. Scientific equipment didn’t work there, well over a thousand years after the mysterious volcanic event known in popular culture as the ‘Doom’. Even satellite images of the area were blurry and indistinct. A Treaty had been in place for decades, forbidding entry. Any people that ventured into Valyria never came back.

Sandor was just exiting as she went into the clean room. “Doctor Stark,” he said shortly, not meeting her eyes. “Get your gear on and meet me in treatment room four-oh-six. Patient is almost here and we’re skipping the ER.”

“Understood,” replied Sansa, ignoring the pang of regret she felt every time she saw her colleague. She could not change the fact he had misunderstood her after their night together, just as she couldn’t change the fact that he’d been the best lover she’d had, by a long way, and she wanted to experience that with him again.

She quickly donned the protective gear over her scrubs. They didn’t have full hazmat suits in their small hospital, but her protective coveralls, gloves and face mask and face shield were the next best things.

Sansa scurried down the now strangely empty corridors to the treatment room Sandor had indicated. She spied what must be the patient on the way and ran to catch up with them.

The three first responders had rigged a kind of portable isolation unit over the patient with clear plastic sheets, but the raised sides of the stretcher initially obscured her view.

Sansa had to summon all her professionalism not to gasp at her first sight of the patient.

The young woman writhed on the stretcher, body contorted unnaturally. Her legs were so bent that her heels were almost under her bottom, her back bowed in an arch. She didn’t appear to be having a seizure, more that severe muscle spasms were pulling her body in ways Sansa had never seen clinically.

The patient's skin was flushed and red, far more so than Sansa had seen on any but the most severe of burn victims. The skin didn’t appear burned though, just crimson in colour. An oxygen mask was secured over her nose and mouth. The woman was emaciated too, her bones visible through her skin, ribs as obvious as slats on a bed. She was partly covered by a sheet, but it had mostly slipped off as she writhed. Her clothing appeared to be in tatters, hanging off her in dirty strips.

“She’s in a bad way,” muttered one of the paramedics. No one else spoke.

The woman opened her eyes suddenly, right as they arrived at the treatment room. Blood flowed from them, an unsettling parody of tears. Sansa was close enough to see the patient’s eyes were a Targaryen violet, an extremely unusual shade. The blood dripped down and pooled in her white-blonde hair, which was already caked underneath her head in bloodied clumps.

“I never,” said the woman through cracked lips. As she spoke, they began to bleed from the movement, dribbling under the oxygen mask.

“It’s okay,” said Sansa gently, “you’re safe now. We’ll help you.”

The woman closed her eyes again, but her lips kept moving very slightly, like she was muttering something.

“In here, then leave,” barked Sandor from the room, addressing the paramedics, and they sprang into action again. He was huge and imposing in his white protective gear. Only his eyes were visible behind the mask and face shield.

In a few seconds, it was just the three of them in the room.

“No nurses?” said Sansa, starting to remove the plastic sheeting so she could reach the patient.

“Limiting contact, but I told Tarly to suit up in case we need him,” said Sandor shortly, lifting the patient’s eyelids to check her eyes as soon as Sansa moved the plastic at the top end. “You forget how to take observations?”

“No, of course not,” replied Sansa. “Just checking.”

Sandor grunted a response.

“I’ll start an IV line,” said Sansa automatically, when she and Sandor had uncovered the rest of the patient for a more thorough examination. When she had a closer look, she realised her error.

“Good fucking luck,” said Sandor, voicing what Sansa was thinking.

The patient’s skin had started to crack, with no possibility of finding a vein. As Sansa gasped in horror, her professionalism slipping for a moment, something seemed to be moving around under the crimson skin. She was uncomfortably reminded of a cat scooting around under a blanket.

“Stage three infection protocol then,” said Sansa, clawing back her self-control. No piercing the patient in case the blood spread a deadly disease.

She stared intently at the cracks appearing in the hot skin. It was worst on the limbs and less severe on her torso. What could cause such a phenomenon?

“Aye,” agreed Sandor, listening to the patient’s heart through his stethoscope and counting. Sansa assumed trying to find a pulse any other way wasn’t feasible. “She’s still tachycardic. One-forty beats per minute now.”

“I’ll try the pulse oximeter, so we don’t have to keep checking,” Sansa said, moving the device to measure the oxygen levels and pulse nearer the bed.

“I could hardly hear her heart,” said Sandor, frowning, “doubt you’ll get a read from her finger.”

“We have to try,” muttered Sansa, clipping the tiny monitor over the woman’s fingertip. “We can’t just watch her suffer like this, Sa… Doctor Clegane.”

He glanced at her, then down at the patient and nodded. Sansa had seen Sandor attempt to resuscitate patients in the ER many times, even knowing the low success rate for such a procedure. He never gave up until he had done everything within his power to save a life, long past the time that logic dictated a situation was hopeless. Sansa had long admired him for that stubborn refusal to let death win.

The machine started beeping feebly, registering a heart rate that matched what Sandor said, though it was erratic. Her blood oxygen levels were low and falling, even with the supplementary oxygen she had been receiving.

“I’ll call Sam for ice. Try to get her fever down.” Sansa said as she walked to the phone on the wall. She talked to the nurses’ station with her request, but heard Sandor speak over the sound of the duty nurse's voice.

“What the fuck? What in the seven fucking Hells?” Sandor rasped, his voice shot through with alarm.

Sansa dropped the phone and spun around.

She froze on the spot.

Tendrils of smoke were rising from the woman.

Sandor stood over her, his eyes wide.

Sansa strode the few steps back to them on stiff and unwilling legs. She summoned all her courage. She became a doctor to help people. She had fought too hard, sacrificed too much, to give up on someone she might be able to help.

“The ice will only be a moment,” Sansa said as she stared at the patient.

The injured woman abruptly began to squirm again, her lips moving more obviously as tendrils of smoke came from them. “Kill me,” she said in a low monotone, audible through the mask. “Kill me.

Kill me.

Kill me.

Kill me.”

As both doctors watched, smoke rose from all her orifices. Puffs clouded the mask with every utterance of “kill me”. Delicate strands of smoke oozed up from her blood pooled eyes, drifted up from her ears. Most obscenely of all, her legs had fallen open and smoke curled up in puffy tendrils from her vagina and anus.

Sansa had never felt so helpless. She wasn’t one to admit defeat, but she was stumped.

The woman fell silent.

The faint smell of what reminded Sansa of pork crackling filled the room.

Nausea roiled her stomach. A memory surfaced, of her dad making a pork roast for Robb’s nameday. Their family had laughed and joked as Ned Stark crouched in front of the oven, trying to get the crackling perfect under the grill.

The delicious aroma that filled the kitchen on that happy day was the same as the smell that filled the treatment room, and Sansa knew she would never be able to recall that memory again without feeling sick.

Under the horrified gaze of both doctors, their patient’s skin blistered and cracked as the volume of smoke increased.

“She’s fucking cooking,” Sandor’s voice was hushed. “Her body is fucking cooking.”

The woman had lapsed into quiet, no longer pleading for death, but her body twitched. Sansa swore it looked like something was churning within her body, using her like a skin puppet.

“Sandor,” Sansa said, her voice clogged with the thick, sweet odour of cooking meat coming from their patient. She never thought she would say the following words. “Sandor, the liquid morphine.”

He nodded quickly, understanding what she wasn’t directly saying. The woman had been given morphine in the ambulance, but it was obviously unsuccessful in providing pain relief. Another dose would be contrary to clinical guidelines, but it might ease her unimaginable suffering before the end.

Sansa had seen Sandor fight to save patients, as she herself had done, but they both understood the situation now.

The door to the room opened and a fully protective suited Sam came in with a trolley containing an enormous tub of ice packs.

“I’ll fetch it after we’ve cooled her down,” Sansa said quietly, starting to line the twitching form with ice packs. “The ice should ease her pain too.”

Sandor grunted agreement as he and Sam did the same.

“How is she still alive?” whispered Sam.

Whatever was under the woman’s skin squirmed in response to the incoming cold. The stench of cooked meat intensified, even as they packed the ice around her.

Sansa glanced at the woman’s face, fixed in a rictus of agony. For the rest of her life, Sansa would never forget the liquid squelch as her patient’s eyeballs popped like overcooked boiled eggs.

Sansa sent her thoughts elsewhere then, as a few tiny chunks of eyeball viscera dripped down her clear, outer facemask.

A crisp spring day.

A soak in the local hot pools.

A long walk with her beloved dog, Lady.

Blue winter roses.

Sansa mechanically piled the ice, attending to her duty in body but not spirit. Sam whimpered occasionally but kept going too. Sandor was swearing constantly under his breath as he worked, grimly determined like the skilled physician he was.

The sudden alarm from the monitor blared into the room, making Sansa jump.

The patient’s heart had finally, blessedly, stopped.

Sam acted on his training to follow procedures and immediately moved to prepare the resuscitation equipment. Sansa and Sandor exchanged a glance over the woman. Sandor shook his head slightly.

Sansa never felt relief when she lost a grievously injured patient. Just sadness for a loss of life, which she’d had to mentally bundle up with requisite professionalism and file away in her head so she could do her job. She had never seen any person suffer like this, though.

Sam paused beside the bed, defibrillator paddles in hand. “What is that?” he whispered.

Sansa thought her fill of horror was over for the night.

She was wrong.

The woman’s crisply crackling flesh started to part, gently and slowly. Slits gaped all over her body as worm-like creatures slipped forth in a despicable parody of birth.

Out of her ruined eyes, they slid.

They filled the oxygen mask, pulling it up from the patient's face, then slithered underneath.

They curled out of her ears, out of the fissures in her skin, out of her genitals. The woman’s light blonde pubic hair swarmed with a thick layer of the creatures.

As Sansa and the men watched, speechless, their patient was soon shrouded in a writhing mass of things that had never been encountered outside of night terrors and horror tales.

Worms perhaps, but no worm possessed such tiny delicate arms. Snakes maybe, but no snake had such a staring, soulless human face. They writhed and oozed, but worst of all they screamed. The room filled with paralysing shrieks, a tinny, eerie song of torment from a hundred gaping mouths.

Akin to a newborn baby, they wailed to herald their sick birth.

A lament of death it just as quickly became, because as the creatures encountered the ice they fizzled and died.

Some creatures were tiny, the length of her finger. One was as long as her arm, and it stared at her with a slimy, expressionless, baby face, mouth open in a scream, before it touched the ice with its quivering form and died.

From one heartbeat to the next, Sandor’s coverall clad arm was around her waist and sweeping her out of the room, a terrified Sam on their heels.

Sandor had not touched her since their night together, was her ridiculous thought.

His grip was so firm.

The worms had perfect little faces.

The smell of pork crackling.

Screams.

Screams and death.

Sam pulled the isolation room door shut, tugged his masks off, staggered over to the nearest rubbish bin and vomited into it.

“Go and decontaminate, Tarly,” said Sandor, letting go of Sansa who wobbled up stayed upright. “Don’t touch your face until you’ve taken your gear off. This is a fucked situation but follow procedure.”

“Go, Sam,” said Sansa, again drawing desperately upon years of training to stay calm. “You’ve done everything you can.”

The nurse nodded, and scurried off in the direction of the decontamination area.

Sansa stood with Sandor in the hallway, the isolation room gone ominously silent in front of them.

It had gone so quiet she could hear Sandor breathe, and her own heartbeat roared in her ears.

“Have you ever seen…” Sansa began, but she stopped because she knew the answer.

Sandor shook his head. “That was some fucked up shit.”

There was a commotion at the end of the hallway as their boss, Doctor Stannis Baratheon, dressed informally, for him, in shirtsleeves but no tie, came striding down towards them. Another nurse flanked him, Sansa’s childhood friend Jeyne Poole.

“Are you okay, Sansa?” blurted Jeyne as she and Stannis stopped several metres away from Sansa and Sandor. “You look wrecked.”

Stannis glared at Jeyne over his shoulder before looking back at the two doctors. “Report,” he snapped. “Why did you leave the patient?”

Between them they detailed the situation. Jeyne’s eyes grew larger and larger, and even the typically stoic Stannis looked visibly disturbed.

“I must call in a specialist team,” Stannis said after they fell into a troubled silence. “Doctor Stark, Doctor Clegane, you performed competently.”

Sansa stared at her feet, the memory of the writhing mass of creatures creeping back into her mind, unable to be banished by happy memories. The room was still quiet beside them, but the baby screams echoed like a dissipating nightmare.

Sandor shifted uneasily next to her.

“Well.” Stannis cleared his throat. “You both need to decontaminate. The authorities will doubtless require an official report after. I’ll supervise sealing the isolation room.”

Sansa just nodded, the adrenaline crash making her weak at the knees.

She hardly registered the walk to the room designated for staff to remove hazardous clothing. It was big enough for several people, though usually the different sexes took turns to use it.

“I don’t want to be alone,” Sansa said as they reached the room.

There was a slight pause, then, “Neither do I,” Sandor admitted.

They undressed at a careful distance. They didn’t speak as they both placed their items in the thick plastic drum set up in the room for hazardous materials. Every movement at the corner of her eye reminded Sansa of the worm-creatures. Every time she swallowed, her saliva slipped down her throat like worm slime. The sound of every breath held the note of a scream. 

The showers were private booths, though by unspoken agreement they took booths side by side. Fresh towels and piles of clean scrubs of assorted sizes sat in cupboards across from the showers.

Sansa cleansed every inch of her skin with soap and washed her hair twice. The floral aroma of the soap couldn’t be further from the oiled crackling scent of the woman’s burning skin, but that still stuck with Sansa. She realised the similarity with burns must be awful for Sandor, and she made her mind up.

Her bare, wet skin still crawling with memories, she pushed open the door to her shower booth and went without ceremony into Sandor’s.

He was standing under the shower, staring blankly at the wall, his huge, naked body just as she remembered from their night together.

He glanced at her, eyes not leaving her face. “You want to forget?”

Sansa nodded. “I want to forget.”

He held out his hand to her and without hesitation she went to him and took it. Hands clasped he tugged Sansa against him, bending down to kiss her.

She stuck her tongue in his mouth right away, moaning unashamedly as they kissed passionately. He pushed her against the wall of the booth, and she ran a hand down his body to grasp his rapidly hardening manhood.

Sandor took his time with her on their night together after the Sevenmas party. He had gone down on her, to her surprise, happily licking her to an orgasm before his jeans had even come off. She’d been on top, their first time having sex, and he’d tenderly ran his hands all over her body, stroking with reverence. They had kissed and touched and murmured encouragements. Sansa had lost track of how many times she’d reached her climax with Sandor that night, he seemed to relish her pleasure, and take pride in pleasing her.

There was no such preamble now.

She wasn’t even particularly aroused, there was just a clawing, desperate desire for Sandor. An all-consuming need to forget.

At her whispered request, he lifted her up against the wall as soon as he was fully hard. She wrapped her legs around him and reached down between their bodies to guide him inside her.

There was no condom, but at that moment Sansa didn’t care and couldn’t stand the thought of any barrier between them.

Sandor’s erection was long and thick, and he stretched her, almost to the point of pain, but that’s what Sansa needed. She needed to relish his bulky, corded muscles holding her up, she needed to feel the burn of his body thrusting hard into hers. She needed to hear his small grunts of pleasure, revel in the hot water still splashing over them both. Sansa clung on to him and took the satisfaction he gave her and gave him pleasure in the comfort of her body in return.

Even through the slippery warmth of the shower water he held her securely, hands under her bottom, holding her tight and safe through his firm thrusts.

She orgasmed almost before she realised it was about to happen. Her body suddenly erupting in a climax despite her troubled mind, pushed over the edge by the pure physicality of their encounter. She gasped Sandor’s name and he tightened his grip on her at that, thrusting harder into her body.

Shortly after, he kissed her roughly, then groaned into her mouth as he peaked too.

He held onto her, resting his forehead against hers.

Sansa wiggled in his grasp after a few moments, and he carefully held her as she set her legs back on the ground, still pressed against the wall.

She wasn’t sure what kind of contact he’d welcome, but she wrapped her arms around Sandor in a hug, as the warm water flowed around them both and washed away the evidence of their encounter.

He returned the gesture, strong arms reassuring her, and they stayed in that position for what felt like a lifetime. Sansa never wanted the comfort to end. She wanted to live her life with her face pressed into his wet, hairy chest, his embrace making everything right in the world.

Finally, Sansa stepped back. “We need to keep working. They’ll be short staffed without us.”

Sandor scrubbed his hand down his face and nodded. “Aye.”

They both silently redressed into clean scrubs.

The corridors were still quiet outside of the decontamination area, but they became populated again as both doctors headed back to the Emergency Department.

Sansa stopped for a moment outside the Department door, some sense making her halt there. Sandor gave her a quizzical look, but stopped as well. Sansa turned her gaze back towards where they’d come from.

A hush fell over them again.

An uneasy feeling tickled up Sansa’s spine. Sandor shifted beside her, but remained silent.

The bustle, the life and death struggles of the Emergency Department sounded faintly through the thick door, but Sansa’s attention was pulled for some reason back towards the isolation rooms where the body of their patient must still be.

Sandor gave a questioning hum.

She frowned and shook her head, turning to go back to her work, back to normality.

Then the distant thin scream of a worm-creature cut through the silence.

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> That was my first time writing horror, so I'd love to hear what you thought of it!


End file.
